Riaz Haq writes this data-driven blog to provide information, express his opinions and make comments on many topics. Subjects include personal activities, education, South Asia, South Asian community, regional and international affairs and US politics to financial markets. For investors interested in South Asia, Riaz has another blog called South Asia Investor at http://www.southasiainvestor.com and a YouTube video channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkrIDyFbC9N9evXYb9cA_gQ

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Pakistan Day: Looking at the 1940 Lahore Resolution in Hindsight

As Pakistanis celebrate Pakistan Day today, March 23, 2013, there are some who are questioning the founder's
wisdom in seeking partition of India to carve out Pakistan as an
independent nation. They do not recognize today's Pakistan as Jinnah's Pakistan. The doubters justifiably point to the rising tide of intolerance and increasing violence and a whole range of problems and crises Pakistan is facing. Many in the oppressed Shia community wonder aloud if it was a mistake to demand a separate country for Muslims of undivided India.

Wax Statues of Quaid-e-Azam Jinnah and Mahatma Gandhi in Islamabad

Are the critics correct in their assessment when they imply that Muslims in Pakistan would have been better off without partition? To answer this question, let us look at the following facts and data:

1. Muslims, the New Untouchables in India:

While India maintains its facade of religious tolerance, democracy and secularism through a few high-profile Muslim tokens among its high officials and celebrities, the ground reality for the vast majority of ordinary Muslims is much harsher.

An Indian government commission headed by former Indian Chief Justice Rajendar Sachar confirms that Muslims are the new untouchables in caste-ridden and communal India. Indian Muslims suffer heavy discrimination in almost every field from education and housing to jobs. Their incarceration rates are also much higher than their Hindu counterparts.

According to Sachar Commission report, Muslims are now worse off than the Dalit caste, or those called untouchables.
Some 52% of Muslim men are unemployed, compared with 47% of Dalit men.
Among Muslim women, 91% are unemployed, compared with 77% of Dalit
women. Almost half of Muslims over the age of 46 ca not read or write.
While making up 11% of the population, Muslims account for 40% of India’s prison population. Meanwhile, they hold less than 5% of government jobs.

Miles Corak of University of Ottawa calculates that the intergenerational earnings elasticity in
Pakistan is 0.46, the same as in Switzerland. It means that a difference
of 100% between the incomes of a rich father and a poor father is
reduced to 46% difference between their sons' incomes. Among the 22
countries studied, Peru, China and Brazil have the lowest economic
mobility with inter-generational elasticity of 0.67, 0.60 and 0.58
respectively. The highest economic mobility is offered by Denmark
(0.15), Norway (0.17) and Finland (0.18).

The author also looked at Gini coefficient of each country and found
reasonably good correlation between Gini and intergenerational income
elasticity.

More evidence of upward mobility is offered by recent Euromonitor market research indicating that Pakistanis are seeing rising disposable incomes. It says that there
were 1.8 million Pakistani households (7.55% of all households) and 7.9
million Indian households (3.61% of all households) in 2009 with
disposable incomes of $10,001 or more. This
translates into 282% increase (vs 232% in India) from 1995-2009 in
households with disposable incomes of $10,001 or more. Consumer spending
in Pakistan has increased at a 26 percent average pace
the past three years, compared with 7.7 percent for Asia, according to Bloomberg.

3. East Pakistan Debacle:

Critics love to point out Pakistan's break-up in 1971 as evidence of failure of Jinnah's Pakistan. They lavish praise on Bangladesh and scold Pakistan as part of the annual ritual a few days before Quaid-e-Azam's birthday every year.

Economic gap between East and West Pakistan in 1960s is often cited as a
key reason for the secessionist movement led by Shaikh Mujib's Awami
League and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. This disparity has grown
over the last 40 years, and the per capita income in Pakistan now stands
at more than twice Bangladesh's in 2012 in nominal dollar terms, higher than 1.6
in 1971.

Pakistan's employment growth has been the highest in South Asia region
since 2000, followed by Nepal, Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka in that
order, according to a recent World Bank report titled "More and Better Jobs in South Asia".

Total
employment in South Asia (excluding Afghanistan and Bhutan) rose from
473 million in 2000 to 568 million in 2010, creating an average of just
under 800,000 new jobs a month. In all countries except Maldives and Sri
Lanka, the largest share of the employed are the low‐end self-employed.

Pakistanis spend more time in schools and colleges and graduate at a
higher rate than their Indian counterparts in 15+ age group, according
to a report on educational achievement by Harvard University researchers
Robert Barro and Jong-Wha Lee. Pakistan has seen its human capital grow significantly over the last decade. With nearly 16% of its population in 25-34 years age group having
college degrees, Pakistan is well ahead of India and Indonesia,
according to Global Education Digest 2009 published by UNESCO Institute of Statistics. UNESCO data also shows that Pakistan's lead is growing with younger age groups.

Here is a summary of Barro-Lee's 2010 data in percentage of 15+ age group students who have enrolled in and-or completed primary, secondary and tertiary education:

Education Level.......India........Pakistan

Primary (Total)........20.9..........21.8

Primary (Completed)....18.9..........19.3

Secondary(Total).......40.7..........34.6

Secondary(Completed)...0.9...........22.5

College(Total).........5.8...........5.5

College(Completed).....3.1...........3.9

According to the latest world hunger index rankings, Pakistan ranks 57 while India and Bangladesh are worse at 65 and 68 among 79 countries ranked by International Food Policy Research Institute in 2012.

Clearly, Pakistanis have not lived up to Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah's vision of a tolerant and democratic Pakistan where the basic rights of all of its citizens, including religious and ethnic minorities, are fully respected. Popular Pakistani columnist Ardeshir Cowasjee put it well when he wrote: "Fortunately for him, Jinnah did
not live long enough to see his dream betrayed by men unworthy even to
utter his name. He died before total disillusionment could set in
(though he had his suspicions that it was on its way) and broke his
heart. From what we know of him, he was that rare being, an
incorruptible man in all the many varied meanings of the word
corruption, purchasable by no other, swayed by no other, perverted by no
other; a man of honor, integrity and high ideals. That the majority of
his countrymen have been found wanting in these qualities is this
country's tragedy."

Defying Prophets of Doom and Gloom:

Pakistan finds itself in the midst many serious crises of governance, economy, energy, security, etc. I do think, however, that all of the available and credible data and indicators confirm the fact that Muslims in Pakistan are not only better off than they are elsewhere in South Asia, they also enjoy higher economic and social mobility than their counterparts in India and Bangladesh.

On Pakistan's National Day today, let me remind everyone that Pakistanis have made a habit of proving pessimist
pundits wrong. Pakistani state was dismissed as a temporary "tent" and a
"nissen hut" at birth
by Viceroy Lord Mountbatten in 1947. That same "nissen hut" is now a
nuclear power about which Brookings' Stephen Cohen says as follows:

“One of the most important puzzles of India-Pakistan relations is not
why the smaller Pakistan feels encircled and threatened, but why the
larger India does. It would seem that India, seven times more populous
than Pakistan and five times its size, and which defeated Pakistan in
1971, would feel more secure. This has not been the case and Pakistan
remains deeply embedded in Indian thinking. There are historical,
strategic, ideological, and domestic reasons why Pakistan remains the
central obsession of much of the Indian strategic community, just as
India remains Pakistan’s.”

91 comments:

Riaz :"Economic gap between East and West Pakistan in 1960s is often cited as a key reason for the secessionist movement led by Shaikh Mujib's Awami League and the creation of Bangladesh in 1971. This disparity has grown over the last 40 years, and the per capita income in Pakistan now stands at more than twice Bangladesh's in 2012 in nominal dollar terms, higher than 1.6 in 1971."

Have you looked at the HDI index report? Pakistan and Bangladesh are neck in neck at 146 with Bangladesh listed above Pakistan !!

South Asia: The average HDI value for the region of 0.558 is the second lowest in the world. Between 2000 and 2012, the region registered annual growth of 1.43% in HDI value, which is the highest of the regions. Afghanistan achieved the fastest growth (3.9%), followed by Pakistan (1.7%) and India (1.5%).

http://www.humandevelopmentblog.org/?q=node/4

Another excerpt from the report summary mentioning Pakistan is as follows:

The figure below plots improvement in HDI value4 against the change in trade to output ratio, an indicator of the depth of participation in global markets. More than four-fifths of these developing countries increased their trade to output ratio between 1990 and 2012. Among the exceptions in the subgroup that also made substantial improvement in HDI value are Indonesia, Pakistan and Venezuela, three large countries that are considered global players in world markets, exporting or importingfrom at least 80 economies. Two smaller countries whose tradeto output ratio declined (Mauritius and Panama) continue to trade at levels much higher than would be expected for countries at comparable income levels. All countries that had substantial improvement in HDI value and increased their trade to output ratio between 1990 and 2012are highlighted in the upper right quadrant of the figure. Countries in the lower right quadrant (including Kenya, the Philippines and South Africa) increased their trade to output ratio but made modest improvement in HDI value.

without partition Muslims would be 40%+ of the population and probably the majority group by 2020.

U seriously think that a country where muslims would constitute>50% of the population they would still be that marginalized???

Your analogy is flawed.

The reason why muslims score near the bottom in sanchar comitte report(which btw is more often quoted than actually read) is:

1.The best and brightest migrated to Pakistan(base effect)

2.They are overwhelmingly concentrated in the most poor states of the country well over half live in UP/Bihar.If you compare HDI indicators of muslims with Hindus in UP/Bihar and other backward states you won't find a significant difference.

At yesterday's Pakistan Day gathering, the perennial question, partition, no partition cropped up. Some, as usual, criticized creation of Pakistan. My contention was that Muslim's future with Hindus was only as untouchables. How can I forget Muslim Paani / Hindu Paani stalls at my childhood railway stations. Muslims were not supposed to touch Hindu Paani. Here I will be honest to recall, Papa,s youth and childhood when Muslims and Hindus used to eat from the same 'dona' (washed burgud leave).

The condition of an economy is often confused with the financial health of its government. Pakistan's economy is perceived to be in a deep hole because of its near-bankrupt fiscal conditions. Similarly, America's inability to settle on a national budget is taken to be an indicator of the collapse of the US Empire.

In some ways, the condition of the economy and the financial health of the government are separate matters. Major stock market indexes at Karachi Stock Exchange and the Wall Street are at their highest level, but both governments are facing serious financial problems. Most of the countries around the world are facing similar dichotomous situations. So how does one solve the riddle of the corporate sector making record profits while governments around the world are in serious financial jeopardy?

The phenomenon needs to be analyzed at grass-roots level. A shopkeeper from my village comes to mind. He told me that he sells PTCL internet cards grossing about Rs 9,000 every day. There are several other such shops in the village. That means that just in one village, the total sale of PTCL internet cards is up to 50,000 rupees. This consumer item was not present five years ago, which means hundreds of computers have been bought in the village recently. Furthermore, if such luxury products are making such huge profits for village shops, traders throughout the country must be making much larger profits selling essentials every day. One of the indicators of booming business in our village is that the United Bank branch in the village is doing very well, according to its manager.

There are thousands of such villages in the country, and that gives one an idea of the mammoth growth of rural markets. Such an undocumented economy is not even factored in estimating the economic growth of the country. From these supposedly marginal markets, one can extrapolate the profits of the corporate sector in towns and cities.

It may be astounding for some that Pakistan's banking sector is considered fourth in profitability in the entire world. Producers of other major industrial and agricultural products are also making huge profits. Cement, fertilizer, automobile, construction and telecommunication industries are doing extremely well. Other than the textile industry, which has been hit by power shortages, there is hardly any manufacturer or importer/exporter of any kind of goods who is not making money. The stock markets look at the profits of these industries and price them accordingly. Therefore the claims of Pakistan's economic growth are not a fairy tale. The evidence is out there in the market.

The government is also like a large corporation whose income depends mainly on tax revenue. Most of the goods and services (such as roads, defense, education and health) provided by the government are public goods which are not priced directly. The government has to price its public goods through direct taxes on income and sales, or indirectly. Following a certain brand of capitalism, countries like Pakistan and the US are not collecting enough taxes to cover the cost of public goods. They have failed mainly in collecting direct taxes on income. While Pakistan cannot implement an appropriate tax collection mechanism because of corruption, the US has leaned towards favoring high income groups and ended up in a jam. The net result is the same: the rich are getting richer, appropriating most of the new wealth generated....

I believe Mr. Haq's point that Muslims in Pakistan are better off when compared to those in India is moot. A majority community always has more access to resources than a minority community. However, he fails to acknowledge that Pakistan's acrimonious split from India, the millions of Hindus that were killed during partition, the wars that India and Pakistan have fought over Kashmir, the Bangladeshi liberation war and Pakistan's funding of fidayeen and jihadist terrorist activities in Kashmir and all over India have permanently and perhaps irreparably disadvantaged the muslim communities scattered all over India. Many unenlightened hindus in India see the plight of hindus in Pakistan (rape, abductions and forced conversions) and Bangladesh (rape, abductions and forced conversions and the state sponsored dispossession of the land owned by millions of Bangladeshi Hindus through the treacherous Vested property act) and believe that Indian muslims also have the same instinctive hatred for them. In India, while Muslims have not yet been treated as equals, their population has mushroomed (as opposed to Pakistan where hindus have all but vanished). The labor participation rate of Muslim women in India(9%) is only slightly lower than that in Pakistan(22%). Bangladesh on the other hand fairs much better in this regard (57%). It is also interesting how Mr. Haq has conveniently omitted all statistics regarding muslim female unemployment in Pakistan. It is common knowledge that the labor participation rate of muslim women is lower than that of women of any religious group all over the world. Numerous studies have consistently shown that even among the top 20% wage earners, muslim women are less likely to participate in the labor force. Seeing how majority muslim middle eastern countries are strongly disinclined to allow their women to participate in the labor force, this "unemployment" is more a case of lack of family support or spousal approval than minority oppression. British pakistanis over the age of 25 have an unemployment rate of 46-48% versus 22% for british indians. 55% of British Pakistanis live in poverty as opposed to 25% of British Indians.

Here's an excerpt of an Express Tribune Op Ed on youth vote in Pak elections:

Figures released by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) show that a significant proportion of this year’s electorate is made up of people under the age of 35. Nearly half of the 84 million registered voters — 47.8 per cent — are aged between 18 and 35, while 19.77 per cent, or 16.88 million voters, are under the age of 26.

There is no doubt that political parties are aware of this sizeable youth vote and its potential voting power. Perhaps, the most obvious example is Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), which has targeted much of its campaigning at young people over the last two years. It has a greater online presence than the other, more established parties, using Facebook and Twitter to disseminate information and engage supporters. PTI campaign material also places emphasis on the concerns of disillusioned youth, pledging to build a better economic environment with more job opportunities. These efforts have been reflected in its pubic rallies, largely populated by young people. While the PTI — a relatively new entrant to the political scene — has an obvious interest in utilising the youth vote to challenge the status quo, the more established parties have also made attempts to court the young. For its part, the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has been aggressively encouraging registration for Computerised National Identity Cards (CNIC). Without one, you cannot vote and many of the new registrations are expected to be in rural areas where the PPP can rely on support. There is also the fact that along with a CNIC comes eligibility for vote-winning public welfare and loans, which young people can benefit from. Meanwhile, in Punjab, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has given away thousands of free laptops to college students.

It is obvious, then, that the big parties don’t want to miss out on the votes of young people. But how important will this group actually be in deciding the election result? The first thing to note is that no one knows how these voters are going to behave. Many of them — around eight million — are new voters, created when the voting age was reduced from 21 to 18 in 2002. There is no guarantee that these newly registered voters will even make it to the polling stations and there isn’t much data available for comparison. The ECP does not collate information on how people have voted according to age group, so it is a mystery what under-35s have done in past elections. Certainly, the influx of new voters didn’t have much impact on the status quo in either the 2002 or 2008 elections. This lack of information makes it difficult to predict the future with any accuracy.--------The political parties may all be engaging with youth when it comes to winning votes, but after the next government has been formed, whoever emerges victorious would do well to focus on the things that will actually keep this young population happy, productive and engaged with society. Rather than free computers or welfare handouts, the only things that will make a difference in the long term are education, economic development and the jobs that go with it.

Sir, please don't subvert and keep repeating incorrect data from the Sachar Committee. For example you state " While making up 11% of the population, Muslims account for 40% of India’s prison population".

First, Justice Sachar deleted this from the final report because many of the figures were unsubstantiated although the media was allowed to look at the data.

Secondly, even if you assume data was legitimate the data was per state basis and NO STATE HAD THE INCARCERATION RATE OF 40% FOR MUSLIMS as you have indicated and that too on a national level!

I have seen this repeated several times on your blogs. Please read the Sachar Report first hand. The report also indicates that muslims in India are very diverse and not a homogenic minority that your blog suggests. Moreover, in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Kerela and other states Muslims are economically better than the average and their literacy rates are higher. In states such as Bihar and UP which economically bring up the rear, are also worst off as far as the muslim minority.

The PM of India setting up a commission to help the country's minorities speaks volumes because that is the first step!

One set of numbers that the Justice Rajinder Sachar committee obtained from states told what is, perhaps, the most distressing story of the state of Muslims in India: in sharp contrast to schools and jobs, where their share is way below their share in the population, Muslims have a disproportionately high representation when it comes to being in prison — in many states, twice or thrice as much as their share of the population.

And yet this crucial data, first reported by The Indian Express on October 29, finds no mention in Sachar's final report that is expected to be tabled in Parliament next week.

What makes this deletion surprising is that this data, showing such a high rate of incarceration, has significant social and political implications, including the further marginalisation of the community, reinforcing stereotypes and deepening prejudice.

When asked about this omission, Sachar said: "It would be improper on my part to comment on any aspect of this report now as it has been submitted to the Prime Minister. It is yet to be tabled in the House."

The deleted data showed that when it came to Muslims in the prison population, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Kerala are the most disproportionate.

• In Maharashtra, the percentage of Muslim jail inmates in all categories is way above their share in the population Muslim share in population is 10.6%, share in the total prison inmates is 32.4%.

• When it comes to those in prison for less than a year, Muslims contribute 40.6% of all prisoners in Maharashtra. -------Says former bureaucrat and now Chief Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah; "This data should have been included. They may have their reasons for excluding it but to see the story of the Indian Muslim and the problems faced by the community in totality, it should have formed part of the report."

For, several experts raised questions about the implications of the data. While some, like former BSF DGP Prakash Singh, whose PIL has prompted police reforms, suggested that the data did not reflect a prejudiced police, others have said that this is linked to the Muslims' high poverty level — 44% for urban Muslims as compared to the national figure of 28% — and the lack of opportunities, including access to legal aid.

HWJ: "Here is your old friend Acker Patell on the Issue of Muslims & Untouchables in India....http://alturl.com/5sfwj"

It still doesn't explain why Indian Muslims as a whole are worse off than Dalits.

And a recent update authored by Abusaleh Sharif, member secretary of the Sachar committee and the man widely regarded as being the main author of that committee's report, indicates that not much has changed since 2006 when the original Sachar Commission report was published. The new report has been released by the US-India Policy Institute of which Sharif is now the chief scholar.

The author seems to be carried away by use of western type metrics to eastern cultures which is wrong. For eg open defecation, hunger, lack of housing etc are not the correct way to see human development in eastern cultures. While open defecation may be looked into as a problem generally in the west, it has be seen differently in the east, since the weather conditions and way of life are different. From time immemorial, eastern civilizations have given more importance to simplicity of lifestyle and open defecation in forests is a natural way of co existence between plants and animals. At least it does not involve taking all the sewage and dumping it in the seas and spoiling the sea. It enriches the land. Also please understand that it is unfair to compare a begger with a millionaire, and such comparisons are bound to be one sided and does not help. A higher HDI in a country like India and Pakistan only shows that there is something wrong with either the HDI or with Pakistan. Yes in a comparison between India and Pakistan, Pakistan may be better, but that is not something that you should brag about.

Though I agree with you that we were being bracketed with Shuddars (untouchables), and would still have been, but strictly speaking, it is unislamic to feel bad about it, all humans being equal. Secondly, if we imagine that we are one state of united India, we would be a population of 1.5 billion people. At least 600 million of them are Muslims (200 + 200 + 200 million in Bangladesh, India and Pakistan). Add to that the number of Shuddars (who are still ruling in 2 states of India with just about 400 million in 1.2 billion), I am sure we would have been rulig in more than the 6 states /provinces (the whole of Punjab, and not just West Punjab + the whole of Bengal, and not just the east Bengal + KPP + Balochistan + Kashmir + Sindh), and perhaps also controlling more than what we are doing in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Imagine the tremendous resources of the united India, including the human, mineral, technological and tourism etc. "The India" would have been bigger than China and also the largest country in the world.I think we need to study the data given in the article sent by you. India is indeed the fastest growing economy today, already beating Chin.

Akhtar: "Though I agree with you that we were being bracketed with Shuddars (untouchables), and would still have been, but strictly speaking, it is unislamic to feel bad about it, all humans being equal."

Being "bracketed with shuddars" wouldn't be as bad as being socioeconomically worse off than shuddars because of systemic discrimination in Hindu dominated India today.

As to being majority in some provinces, it didn't see to make any difference to Muslim lives before 1947 in undivided India.

Punjab makes up more than half of Pakistan's population. It is the largest, best educated and most prosperous province in Pakistan today:

Let me share some data that sheds some light on the lives of Muslims in a province where Muslims were a majority in 1940s undivided India.

Muslims in undivided Punjab had very low standards of living relative to Hindus and Sikhs, they were poor and backward, and there was no Muslim professional or business class as there is now.

Although I haven't seen any data on it yet, I bet similar or worse situation prevailed in Bengal and Sindh as well. And I can bet development never touched the lives of the Muslim provinces of NWFP and Baluchistan either.

At the same time, the overall pre-mature mortality rate (982 per 100,000) in Pakistan is still lower than India's (1,097 per 100,000), according to a recently released Global Burdens of Disease Study 2010.

^^RH: "It still doesn't explain why Indian Muslims as a whole are worse off than Dalits"-----

I don't claim to have possession of "the truth", but how about this:

After allowing for the fact that many rich, educated & skilled Muslims left for Pakistan, of the remaining Muslims in India, most (95%) of them are actually converts from the lowest classes/castes. So it should not be surprising to find that their bulk statistics track those of the lowest classes/castes.

I think we should ask the following key question:

What were the relative statistics for Indian Muslims in 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000?

A) If we find that the relative statistics for Indian Muslims were GOOD in 1960 and then steadily DETIRIORATED over time such that they are now on par with the Dalit Statistics, THEN we would draw one type of conclusion.

B) On the other hand, IF we find that the relative statistics for Indian Muslims (after exit of top classes of Muslims in 1947-1951) HAVE ALWAYS been at par with the dalits through 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000 THEN we would draw another set of conclusions.

HWJ: "I don't claim to have possession of "the truth", but how about this..."

How about "the truth" that Muslims are not only not socioeconomically equal but worse than Dalits...which they weren't at the time of the partition in 1947?

Could it be that Dalits, a Hindu caste, have had the benefit of affirmative action while Muslims have not?

Have you heard about Professor Ahmad Hasan Dani who attended BHU and studied archeology, and said that he was ostracized and treated as a pariah by Hindu students and faculty at BHU. He was not allowed to sit and eat with his fellow students, he was asked to keep his plates and dishes separate in his room, and required to stand outside the dining hall to be served his meal and then wash the dishes himself. Later, when he graduated at the top of the archeology class, he was offered a faculty position, but the University head and former president of India Radhakrishnan told him that he would be paid a salary but he would not be allowed to teach. Here is a video clip of late Prof Dani talking about it:

Here are a series of very interesting articles on the VIGOROUS and intellectually-rich debate amongst Indian Muslims about the nature of Muslim-Society in South-Asia.

http://alturl.com/qqxcs

Note that they have moved the debate beyond "theory of Islam" to actual practice as seen in South-Asia.

Given the similarity of the social structures, I think it is TRAGIC that such debates have never happened and are still not happening in our country.

Our countrymen are still stuck in the "theoretical rhetoric" pattern in which Muslim societies are examined through the prism of selected Quranic verses, without any regard to what actually happens in reality right before our eyes.

This shows how INTELLECTUALLY-WEAK our people are when compared to the Muslims of India.

Agreed with the statistics. So now "quo vadis"? Where to go from here? And who will take us there? A dictatorship (Khilafat) or a "democracy" "sans" (without) direction, or should it be a normal grassroots democracy by empowering the local units (the norm of democracy throughout the developed world, including India)?Moreover, are the Shuddars not really improving socio-economically in India?Either we do something ourselves, or else become a part of India (to which Indian Brahmin will never agree; as they do not wish to have Bangladesh merged with them).In retrospect, I have a feeling that it was not our beloved Jinnah, but rather the conniving Brahmins (led by Nehru) and conspiring Banya (led by V. B. Patel) who made it look as if it is the achievement of our own great leader.

Akhtar's comment that ' it is unislamic to feel bad about it ' needs clarification.Regarding Sufias role in promoting Islam, it would have been manifold, had anyone of them, appointed their Shudar convert to khilafat. My contention as regards spread of Islam in India is : India, because of its caste system was the most ideal country for spreading Islam. We failed because we never treated the new muslims equals. Kings readily married high birth women but never gave their daughters in marriage to even high class new muslims let alone shudars. Shudars remained shudars inspite of becoming muslims.But according to Brahmin teachings Muslims of all classes remained " malich ". That was and is Muslims fate in, pre partition post partition India.

Akhtar: "A dictatorship (Khilafat) or a "democracy" "sans" (without) direction, or should it be a normal grassroots democracy by empowering the local units (the norm of democracy throughout the developed world, including India)?"

People demanding restoration of khilafat in Pakistan are few but they are very vocal and violent. I don't expect them to prevail.

The last khilafat of The Ottomans is re-emerging in Turkey not as a khilafat but as a successful modern democracy which offers a better model for the Muslim world.

Democracy, which has until now been stunted by feudals and military, is beginning to grow roots with the emergence of independent judiciary, independent media, decline of feudal power, and rising middle class in Pakistan.

Democratically elected parliament has completed its full term for the first time in Pak history and caretaker PM sworn in to conduct free and fair elections.

I agree with Time Magazine's recent piece titled "Two Cheers for Democracy", not three cheers because it'll take a while to realize democracy's full potential.

Let's remember it took centuries for democracy to evolve into its current form in America and Europe. India is still a democracy in terms of institutions but lacks substance. What Ambedkar said is stil true: "democracy is only a top dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic".

AKHTAR: "Either we do something ourselves, or else become a part of India....In retrospect, I have a feeling that it was not our beloved Jinnah, but rather the conniving Brahmins (led by Nehru) and conspiring Banya (led by V. B. Patel) who made it look as if it is the achievement of our own great leader."-----

"Well, I think Americans have been fundamentally puzzled right from the beginning about Pakistan... US is confused about Pakistan because Pakistan is confused about ITSELF.... what is it?... who created it?...why was it created? ..."

See more: http://alturl.com/6vytchttp://alturl.com/2phma

65 years is a long time. If these questions have not be resolved consensually by now, I fear they may never be resolved....

^^RH: "Yes, it's not good. It does appear though that Pakistan's HDI is growing faster than average for South Asia region.."----

Really? A short-term trends do not imply anything sustainable. We have to look at the long-term (20-30 years) trends to really do a comparison between Bangladesh and our country. Here it is:http://alturl.com/vomqy

As seen, there was a short-term burst between around 2002 to 2007, but it has since petered-out and is back at its long-term trendline of slow improvement.

It is not possible---short of communist rule-- to have a stagnant economy accompanied by a galloping HDI. I don't see any dramatic improvements in our HDI until fast growth returns. Bangladesh, on the other hand, continues with fast growth and its HDI will keep improving at a healthy pace.

^^RH: "Muslims in undivided Punjab had very low standards of living relative to Hindus and Sikhs, they were poor and backward..."----

This may have been true, but whose fault was that?

Let us look at the history of the Punjab: http://alturl.com/fgk34

1) From 1000 A.D. to 1750 A.D. Punjab was under Rule of Muslim Kings for 750 years.

2) Then there was a brief spell of less than 10 years under Maratha Rule, before the Muslim Kings were restored for another 30 years.

3) Then the Sikhs ruled Punjab from about 1790 to 1850 A.D. for about 60 years.

4) Then the British took over after about 1850 and remained rulers until 1947 for a total of about 100 years.

SUMMARY: Of the last 1000 years in the Punjab,1) Muslim kings ruled for 830 years.2) Christian kings ruled for 100 years.3) Sikh Kings ruled for 60 years.4) Hindu Kings ruled for 10 years.

So if the Hindus and Sikhs can do well even after rarely having held political power, what was causing the backwardness of Muslims in the Punjab?

In fact, the Hindus & Sikhs of Punjab look almost like the Jews in Europe: They are not the majority, they rarely hold political power, and yet they seem to do disproprotionately well.

Surely the Sikhs & Hindus could not have been oppressing the Muslims of Punjab from 1850 to 1947, when the whole of Punjab was under Christian Rule with a lot of the Punjabi Muslims serving happily in the British Indian Army and freely-imbing the "chotta-peg" culture.

I think we must look for explanations other than the whining victimhood syndrome that we see so often. A deeper analysis of what plagued Muslim society in Punjab is needed.

Another thing we should look into is whether the current prosperity & development of West Punjab has come because of disproportionate investment in Punjab at the expense of the development in the minority provinces. Have you given that any though? You can be sure that the Sindhis, Baloch & Pashtuns have. And how are the Seraikis doing in terms of development?

...Nili Bar Colony was situated in the Montgomery (now Sahiwal) and Multan Districts. The scheme covered approximately 800,000 acres of land with perennial irrigation, and 260,000 acres with non-perennial irrigation. The unique feature of Nili Bar Colony was that over 360,000 acres, or 45 per cent of perennially-irrigated land, was reserved for sale by auction. Thus for their numbers Sikhs, as well as Hindus, did obtain a disproportionate amount of land, an indication of their stronger economic standing.

The above facts may not be able to present anything resembling a complete picture; they are still useful as they indicate the kind of pressures under which a rapid change was being forced into the society in western Punjab. In Dr Agnihotri’s words, “the extension of canal irrigation meant throwing the weight of the Imperial Regime behind pushing settled agriculture. This marked the extension of the long arm of the state...

It has been ten awesome years since I started working and living in Karachi, Pakistan. It’s a strange realisation that I have never lived longer in any other place my whole life.

I arrived in March of 2003.

It was the start of the Iraq war and one can only imagine the concern my parents felt when I told them I was moving to Pakistan. Their apprehension has not faded (they get daily reminders of the horrors that Pakistan is exposed to) but they have now accepted that this is my home.

Obviously I was also quite uneasy at first, and to make matters worse in June 2003 Time Magazine ran a front cover story with the headline:

“Karachi: The world’s most dangerous city.”

The interview inside quoted one of Karachi’s most infamous hit-men. Surprisingly, it was not the interview or the murder statistics that blew me away, it was the fact that even Karachi’s most notorious hit-man had a number of body guards for his own protection.

When I first moved here, driving on MT Khan Road was a short and excruciating version of the Paris – Dakar race. The city would get completely swamped and immobile for days following a refreshing summer rainstorms, and there was just McDonalds at Park Towers for entertainment.

Ten years is a long time and Karachi is a different city now.

Despite all our complaints, the infrastructure of the city has completely transformed and life in Karachi has moved on. It remains a city of extremes, with the newest and most expensive imported cars trading places with camel carts. With high-flying socialites enjoying coffee at the newest hot spot in town and millions of people living from day to day, if not hour to hour, fighting for survival.

However, as a Dutch man I strongly believe in an equitable society where people have similar opportunities and chances, and where success is based on merit.

We live in a country where 100 million people are under the age of 25, all who dream to acquire a branded life style. Sadly, only a small percentage of them have the abilities to do so (50% of the population under 25 can’t read or write). It is a wonder that this social time bomb has not gone off yet.

Ten years living here and I have learned to love this country.

Pakistan is an absolutely amazing place with amazing people. No other country in the world would be able to get back on its feet after the numerous mortal blows it has received.

An example that will always stay in my heart was the reaction to the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. In a time of great need, it was humbling to witness the compassion and commitment to help fellow citizens.

I am very optimistic about our future. With our resources, our resourcefulness, the desire to build a better life for our families, our compassion and our love for the country, we will get it right and prosper. We will elect the right leaders that will sort out our governance issues.

We will come together unite, showing the world how magical Pakistan can be, the place that I so dearly call home.

856,000 Pakistanis pay taxes according to Bloomberg news (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-25/pakistan-s-army-of-overseas-workers-keeps-economy-from-collapse.html). In India which has a little over 6.7 times as many people, 35 million people (over 40 times as many taxpayers as Pakistan). Could you help me understand why Pakistan has so many millions of "upwardly mobile" middle class households yet has six times fewer taxpayers. What's happening ?

RK: "Could you help me understand why Pakistan has so many millions of "upwardly mobile" middle class households yet has six times fewer taxpayers. What's happening"

It's because Pakistan has a much bigger underground economy--by some measures it's as big as the documented economy. If you read the Bloomberg carefully you'll see it talk about:

Some Pakistanis also use the system to avoid paying tax, said Nuzhat Ahmad, director of the Applied Economics Research Center at the University of Karachi.

“If I get a remittance and I buy a house from it, I can say my brother has sent me the money from abroad, and I don’t have to pay income tax,” she said from her office. “That’s a big downside” for the government.

HERE'S what is happening in India: The two Ambani brothers can buy 100 percent of every company listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) and would still be left with $30 billion to spare. The four richest Indians can buy up all goods and services produced over a year by 169 million Pakistanis and still be left with $60 billion to spare. The four richest Indians are now richer than the forty richest Chinese. [current rating shows the elder brother Mukesh’s total wealth is 22 billion US dollars]In November, Bombay Stock Exchange's benchmark Sensex flirted with 20,000 points. As a consequence, Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries became a $100 bill ion company (the entire KSE is capitalized at $65 billion). Mukesh owns 48 percent of Reliance.

This is a VERY good and interesting speech by Saleem Safi at the MQM conference. Worth listening to every word end-to-end. Highly recommended for all intelligent & thinking Pakistanis, especially young people.

In addition to a number of other key issues facing Pakistan, he also expresses his views on the Lahore Resolution & partition:

http://alturl.com/cjywq

His take on Partition (13:00 onwards): "In retrospect... if I had been there in those days, I would probably have OPPOSED the partition along with Congress and Jamiat-ul-ulema-e-Hind".

It is noteworthy that despite being a Pashtun, Saleem Safi still manages to speak near-perfect Urdu.

Akhtar: "Capital suggestion Dr Farrukh Saleem HERE'S what is happening in India: The two Ambani brothers can buy 100 percent of every company listed on the Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) and would still be left with $30 billion to spare....."

This article by Farrukh Saleem has been making its rounds among Indians and Pakistanis since 2010. It's essentially ode to the rise of the oligarchs in an India which has a few islands of prosperity in a vast ocean of poverty.

For Pakistanis who tout it, it raises the following questions:

1. Do you want be like India where 55 recently minted billionaires control 20% of the GDP in a nation with the world's largest population of poor, hungry and illiterates two-thirds of whom still defecate i the open?

http://www.riazhaq.com/2010/08/63-years-after-independence-india.html

http://www.riazhaq.com/2011/07/india-worlds-biggest-oligarchy.html

2. Do you want Pakistan, the most egalitarian country in South Asia in terms of low Gini Index, to emulate an India where the Gini Index is much higher and rising with widening rich-poor gap?

http://www.riazhaq.com/2011/08/pakistans-story-after-64-years-of.html

3. Do you want to replace Pakistan's declining feudal power with the power of industrial oligarchs like Ambani who describes India's ruling Congress party as "apni dukaan"?

4. Do you know that most of the inflated claims about the accomplishments of Indian diaspora have been debunked by India's own Times of India US correspondent Chidanand Rajghatta in a piece "India rising in US: Govt falls victim to net hoax"?

HWJ: quoting Salim Safi "In retrospect... if I had been there in those days, I would probably have OPPOSED the partition along with Congress and Jamiat-ul-ulema-e-Hind".

At the time of the referendum for partition in NWFP, most Pashtuns supported Ghaffar Khan and opposed partition. But Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan got overwhelming vote of Hindko speakers from Hazara along with a minority of Pashto speakers for Muslim League and won the day for Pakistan.

To this day, most Hindko speakers of Hazara support Pakistan Muslim League and vote against Pashto speaking leaders of ANP and JUI. I

Here's an Atlantic Mag piece arguing that China is much bigger than the rest of BRICs:

In 2001, China's GDP was equal to the GDP of all the RIBS combined. In the five years since the global financial crisis, just the increment of growth in China's economy is larger than the entire economies of Russia and India combined. Indeed, in the half decade since the financial crisis, 40 percent of all growth in the global economy has occurred in China.

Last year, the economy of China expanded by $1 trillion; Russia and India grew by $100 billion; Brazil and South Africa shrank. In 2001, China ranked sixth among the world's economies. Today it stands at number two, on track to overtake the U.S. and become the world's largest economy in the next decade.

In trade, China accounts for 11 percent of global merchandise exports, roughly double that of the RIBS combined. Moreover, the markets to whom China and the RIBS export and from whom they buy are the U.S., the EU, and Japan. Merchandise trade among China and the RIBS barely registers in world trade statistics.

In foreign reserves, China held twice as much as the RIBS combined in 2001 (with $220 billion), and now holds three times as much as the others (with $3.3 trillion). In greenhouse gas emissions, China accounts for 30 percent of the global total, more than twice the amount of the RIBS combined.

Goldman Sachs continues trumpeting the rise of the BRICS (though it refuses to include South Africa, which was pulled into group by China in 2010). Its latest "BRIC Fund" prospectus forecasts that by 2030, the BRIC nations will have a combined economy larger than that of the G7. If this happens, the most important part of the story will be that China added $17 trillion to the global economy, effectively creating another United States in less than 20 years.

Concepts that jumble together elements with more differences than similarities sow confusion. While it may have played a useful purpose at the beginning of the century to highlight faster-growing emerging economies, BRICS has become an analytic liability. Like generalizations about per-capita growth in countries where wealth disparities are widening (as the rich get richer while the income of the poor declines), submerging China in this acronym misses more than it captures. If a banner is required for a meeting of these five nations, or for a forecast about their economic and political weight in the world ahead, RIBS is much closer to the reality. Even if governments, investment banks, and newspapers keep using BRICS, thoughtful readers will think China and the rest.

^^RH: "At the time of the referendum for partition in NWFP, most Pashtuns supported Ghaffar Khan and opposed partition. But Khan Abdul Qayyum Khan got overwhelming vote of Hindko speakers from Hazara along with a minority of Pashto speakers for Muslim League and won the day for Pakistan."-----

The best way to gauge the relatively restrained atmosphere of the India-China rivalry is to compare it to the rivalry between India and Pakistan. India and Pakistan abut one another. India's highly populated Ganges River Valley is within 480 kilometers (300 miles) of Pakistan's highly populated Indus River Valley. There is an intimacy to India-Pakistan tensions that simply does not apply to those between India and China. That intimacy is inflamed by a religious element: Pakistan is the modern incarnation of all of the Muslim invasions that have assaulted Hindu northern India throughout history. And then there is the tangled story of the partition of the Asian subcontinent itself to consider -- India and Pakistan were both born in blood together.

Partly because the India-China rivalry carries nothing like this degree of long-standing passion, it serves the interests of the elite policy community in New Delhi very well. A rivalry with China in and of itself raises the stature of India because China is a great power with which India can now be compared. Indian elites hate when India is hyphenated with Pakistan, a poor and semi-chaotic state; they much prefer to be hyphenated with China. Indian elites can be obsessed with China, even as Chinese elites think much less about India. This is normal. In an unequal rivalry, it is the lesser power that always demonstrates the greater degree of obsession. For instance, Greeks have always been more worried about Turks than Turks have been about Greeks.

China's inherent strength in relation to India is more than just a matter of its greater economic capacity, or its more efficient governmental authority. It is also a matter of its geography. True, ethnic-Han Chinese are virtually surrounded by non-Han minorities -- Inner Mongolians, Uighur Turks and Tibetans -- in China's drier uplands. Nevertheless, Beijing has incorporated these minorities into the Chinese state so that internal security is manageable, even as China has in recent years been resolving its frontier disputes with neighboring countries, few of which present a threat to China.

India, on the other hand, is bedeviled by long and insecure borders not only with troubled Pakistan, but also with Nepal and Bangladesh, both of which are weak states that create refugee problems for India. Then there is the Maoist Naxalite insurgency in eastern and central India. The result is that while the Indian navy can contemplate the projection of power in the Indian Ocean -- and thus hedge against China -- the Indian army is constrained with problems inside the subcontinent itself.

India and China do play a great game of sorts, competing for economic and military influence in Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. But these places are generally within the Greater Indian subcontinent, so that China is taking the struggle to India's backyard.

Just as a crucial test for India remains the future of Afghanistan, a crucial test for China remains the fate of North Korea. Both Afghanistan and North Korea have the capacity to drain energy and resources away from India and China, though here India may have the upper hand because India has no land border with Afghanistan, whereas China has a land border with North Korea. Thus, a chaotic, post-American Afghanistan is less troublesome for India than an unraveling regime in North Korea would be for China, which faces the possibility of millions of refugees streaming into Chinese Manchuria.

^^RH Quote Stratfor: "A rivalry with China in and of itself raises the stature of India because China is a great power with which India can now be compared. Indian elites hate when India is hyphenated with Pakistan, a poor and semi-chaotic state; they much prefer to be hyphenated with China. Indian elites can be obsessed with China, even as Chinese elites think much less about India. This is normal. In an unequal rivalry, it is the lesser power that always demonstrates the greater degree of obsession. For instance, Greeks have always been more worried about Turks than Turks have been about Greeks."----

If we are willing to be honest and keep an open mind, we can take a closer look at the above-statement to see test its intrinsic accuracy.

Rameshnarayanswami: "India is hyphenated with Pakistan, a poor and semi-chaotic state;" interesting that Mr Haq has quoted an expert saying this and that too around Pakistan Day !"

And where does the expert say that India is not poor and not semi-chaotic"?

If you read carefully, the larger point the author is making is India-Pakistan hyphenation is more appropriate than India-China hyphenation. But, Stratfor's Kaplan says, the Indian elites seek hyphenation with China because it "raises the stature of India".

Kaplan adds:

China's inherent strength in relation to India is more than just a matter of its greater economic capacity, or its more efficient governmental authority. It is also a matter of its geography. True, ethnic-Han Chinese are virtually surrounded by non-Han minorities -- Inner Mongolians, Uighur Turks and Tibetans -- in China's drier uplands. Nevertheless, Beijing has incorporated these minorities into the Chinese state so that internal security is manageable, even as China has in recent years been resolving its frontier disputes with neighboring countries, few of which present a threat to China.

India, on the other hand, is bedeviled by long and insecure borders not only with troubled Pakistan, but also with Nepal and Bangladesh, both of which are weak states that create refugee problems for India. Then there is the Maoist Naxalite insurgency in eastern and central India. The result is that while the Indian navy can contemplate the projection of power in the Indian Ocean -- and thus hedge against China -- the Indian army is constrained with problems inside the subcontinent itself.

http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/india-china-rivalry

There's another piece in The Atlantic which says that China doesn't belong in any economic grouping with India:

the brute fact is that China has continued growing more than twice as fast as other members of this club. Indeed, in every year since 2001, the gap between China's GDP and that of each of the others has widened. In the decade ahead, the gap is likely to become even more pronounced. Given this divergence, it is more appropriate to consider China separately from Russia, India, Brazil and South Africa, which, if an acronym is called for, can be called: "RIBS."

Here's some wishful thinking by a former commander of Indian Navy as reported IDRW.org:

Quite clearly, in terms of land power, the Chinese are ahead of us not just in numbers, but in their ability to move forces quickly and in the required numbers, both force multipliers. That said, this does not immediately make our cause a lost one. We are not about to see a war being fought a la World War II in which the fight will go on until one side is, ultimately, forced to surrender. What is more germane is whether, in a limited conflict, like the one in Kargil, we have the capability to inflict a degree of punishment that the adversary might not find acceptable – militarily and politically. In 1978, Vietnam achieved this objective against the invading Chinese army easily, despite being seriously outnumbered and outgunned. The moot question, therefore, is whether we are equipped and able to do something similar or not. Frankly, not even the most cynical among our military will doubt the Indian Army’s ability to do much more to the adversary than what Vietnam could do more than three decades ago. Our capabilities may not deter in the absolute sense, but are sufficient to dissuade the Chinese.

In the air, the situation is different. The Chinese have many more aircraft, but a good number are relatively old and unsuited to today’s war fighting. Even though they have lengthened and strengthened airfields in the Tibetan plateau, Chinese aircraft are more constrained in their operating parameters, such as endurance and weapon loads, compared to ours operating from airfields located at sea level. So, if it comes to a fight in the air, do not expect the Chinese air force to have a free ride. On the contrary, India has enough in its inventory to give the Chinese a run for their money, and more. Despite delays in inducting more fighter aircraft, the Indian Air Force, in its Sukhois, MIG-29s and Mirages has a quite potent punch. In short, in air power, the equation is pretty even.

At sea, the equation is decidedly tilted towards us. In the Indian Ocean region, India has advantages that the Chinese will be hard put to match. Availability of organic air power through dozens of airfields strung across the Indian coast and island territories enable not just credible operating capability across the large water space, but also surveillance over critical energy and shipping routes. Not only do the Chinese have limited resources to facilitate credible operations, their access to the Indian Ocean is constrained by the narrow channels of the South East Asian archipelago. These potential vulnerabilities in this maritime theatre must weigh heavily in Beijing.

This brings us to the nature of a possible military conflict. A skirmish at a couple of places on the land border cannot be ruled out and will soon be controlled, but anything more substantive will almost certainly bring air and sea power into play. China has an exposed energy lifeline across the Indian Ocean that it will find difficult to safeguard in the face of opposition. This serious vulnerability at sea cannot be kept out of the calculations that it will, inevitably, have to make, should it decide to take the military option.

In short, there is power asymmetry on land to our disadvantage, reasonable equality in the air and credible advantages in our favour at sea. It is this totality of the military interface that any adversary has to consider. The balance is not as lopsided as many of our people would have us believe, but it could become that if we are not careful. We must look at the military equations in their totality – and not just those limited to the land border – and develop our capabilities accordingly. Military planners are not concerned with what potential adversaries may or may not do; their task only is to ensure that the equation is not allowed to alter to our disadvantage. This calls for calm and continuing analysis – not alarm.

HWJ: "The writer from their Navy is merely wishing for a larger budget increase for the navy vis-a-vis the other services. It is called "marketing" in the civilian world."

I disagree. If he was asking for more budget for the India Navy, he wouldn't be claiming that "at sea, the equation is decidedly tilted towards us. In the Indian Ocean region, India has advantages that the Chinese will be hard put to match."

As to the Pakistan Navy, it's a fact that PN is no match for the Indian Navy which is much bigger and stronger.

^^RH: "disagree. If he was asking for more budget for the India Navy, he wouldn't be claiming that "at sea, the equation is decidedly tilted towards us. In the Indian Ocean region, India has advantages that the Chinese will be hard put to match."----

I think he was saying that India has the "natural advantage" and so should build on it. I don't think he meant that the Indian Navy was more powerful than the Chinese Navy TODAY-- even a child knows that it not true.

He uses the words "but it could become that if we are not careful" as the catch-line to drawn in the opinion for increase in future funding for his particular service.

Quite frequently you mention the many positive features of Pakistan and in equal comparison many negative things about India then why does India rank better in Human Development??Is this some sort of Western conspiracy at the UN?

I think you are onto something. Not only has it listed India higher but it has deliberately put the boundaries in such a way that India just slips into medium HDI while Pakistan just slips into low HDI. Looks like a deliberate strategy to harm Pakistan's image. Alternatively it cud be some individual economists mischief may be he is jealous of our Prof Riaz ul Haq sahib's stature.

Here are some excerpts of an interesting story published in The Hindu:

Can anyone really live on Rs. 26 a day, the income of the officially poor in rural India? Two youngsters try it out.

Late last year, two young men decided to live a month of their lives on the income of an average poor Indian. One of them, Tushar, the son of a police officer in Haryana, studied at the University of Pennsylvania and worked for three years as an investment banker in the US and Singapore. The other, Matt, migrated as a teenager to the States with his parents, and studied in MIT. Both decided at different points to return to India, joined the UID Project in Bengaluru, came to share a flat, and became close friends.

The idea suddenly struck them one day. Both had returned to India in the vague hope that they could be of use to their country. But they knew the people of this land so little. Tushar suggested one evening — “Let us try to understand an ‘average Indian', by living on an ‘average income'.” His friend Matt was immediately captured by the idea. They began a journey which would change them forever.

To begin with, what was the average income of an Indian? They calculated that India's Mean National Income was Rs. 4,500 a month, or Rs. 150 a day. Globally people spend about a third of their incomes on rent. Excluding rent, they decided to spend Rs. 100 each a day. They realised that this did not make them poor, only average. Seventy-five per cent Indians live on less than this average.

The young men moved into the tiny apartment of their domestic help, much to her bemusement. What changed for them was that they spent a large part of their day planning and organising their food. Eating out was out of the question; even dhabas were too expensive. Milk and yoghurt were expensive and therefore used sparingly, meat was out of bounds, as were processed food like bread. No ghee or butter, only a little refined oil. Both are passionate cooks with healthy appetites. They found soy nuggets a wonder food — affordable and high on proteins, and worked on many recipes. Parle G biscuits again were cheap: 25 paise for 27 calories! They innovated a dessert of fried banana on biscuits. It was their treat each day.-------------Living on Rs.100 made the circle of their life much smaller. They found that they could not afford to travel by bus more than five km in a day. If they needed to go further, they could only walk. They could afford electricity only five or six hours a day, therefore sparingly used lights and fans. They needed also to charge their mobiles and computers. One Lifebuoy soap cut into two. They passed by shops, gazing at things they could not buy. They could not afford the movies, and hoped they would not fall ill.

However, the bigger challenge remained. Could they live on Rs. 32, the official poverty line, which had become controversial after India's Planning Commission informed the Supreme Court that this was the poverty line for cities (for villages it was even lower, at Rs. 26 per person per day)?--------... Do we really need that hair product or that branded cologne? Is dining out at expensive restaurants necessary for a happy weekend? At a larger level, do we deserve all the riches we have around us? Is it just plain luck that we were born into circumstances that allowed us to build a life of comfort? What makes the other half any less deserving of many of these material possessions, (which many of us consider essential) or, more importantly, tools for self-development (education) or self-preservation (healthcare)?

We don't know the answers to these questions. But we do know the feeling of guilt that is with us now. ....

....And above all — in Matt's words — that empathy is essential for democracy.

^^RH: "... there are some who are questioning the founder's wisdom in seeking partition of India to carve out Pakistan as an independent nation... and....wonder aloud if it was a mistake to demand a separate country for Muslims of undivided India."----

Perhaps we should also look at this question from the Indian point of view in order to truly understand it better.

What do the Indians think of partition 65 years after it took place?

After all, the Congress party (Nehru, Azad, Patel, Gandhi) always said that partition would be a mistake? So do the Indians of today agree with the old Congress view? Or do they now reject the Gandhian position and feel that partition has turned out to be good for India?

This is an interesting question and leads to an interesting debate. Here is something that would interest your readers in the form of an Indian debate on this issue (note that your oft-quoted Ramchander Guha is in it, as in Mark Tully, the veteran BBC South-Asia reporter):

Don't forget the Lahore Resolution was about 'East Pakistan' or Bangladesh as well. I'm not sure if you responded to a previous post about the discrimination despair and death that the Bengalis faced before 1971.

Secondly, we were labelled as the "bad part" of the Pakistan before 1971 because of the endemic poverty relative to the Punjab and Sindh regions.

Little investment came to the east even though it was Jinnah's vision to massively invest in East Pakistan to "prevent floods famine".

You publish figures highlighting low poverty figures but, did you realize that West Pakistan pretty much ignored East Pakistan and after 1971 these same figures of less poverty and middle class were a result of East Pakistan being broken off becoming Bangladesh!

"What do the Indians think of partition 65 years after it took place? ". - HWJ

Well in hindsight, personally, I think Jinnah was right when he said "not everyone is a Gandhi". The undivided nation would have been too fractitious for its own good. Although, Gandhi and Nehru predicted that the division would result in carnage and violence and indeed it did.

Territorial disputes aside, most Indians today feel satisfied that Pakistan is a different country. Moreover, most Indians today never entertain the thought 'Pakistan should have never split' anymore.

Ashraful: "Don't forget the Lahore Resolution was about 'East Pakistan' or Bangladesh as well. I'm not sure if you responded to a previous post about the discrimination despair and death that the Bengalis faced before 1971."

Most of the stories of "discrimination despair and death" you hear about East Pakistan are based on myth-making by Bengali nationalists, particularly Awami League, to justify their actions in splitting Pakistan.

The fact is both East and West Pakistan did very well economically until 1971, especially when compared with the "Hindu rate of growth" in India.

It's a fact that the wealthy 22 families were almost all in West Pakistan, mostly Gujaratis just as the biggest oligarchs in India all come from Gujarat or Marwar.

But it's also fact that Ayub Khan forced them to invest in factories in East Pakistan to spur the economy there.

As to the highly exaggerated claims of 3 million deaths in East Pakistan 1971, the best and the only scholarly work done so far by Sarmila Bose, the great grand niece of Subhash Chandar Bose, debunks such claims and puts the estimate between 50,000 and 100,000, including the dead among west Pakistanis and opponents of separation who were killed by RAW-backed Hindu-dominated Mukti Bahini.

KARACHI - Hopes for change in the political setup along with strong foreign inflows were the major drivers of the country’s equity market during the first quarter of calendar year 2013 (1Q2013).The market observers believe that while the May 11 election are around the corner, the equity investors were cautiously looking at the fast-changing political developments in the country. “We anticipate market activity to hinge on political temperature of the country,” viewed Topline analyst Nauman Khan.The heightened investors’ confidence was also attributed to significant reduction in the policy rate that had facilitated the funds flows towards equity market, said the analysts.The benchmark KSE 100-share index posted a gain of 6 percent, 5 percent in dollar terms, during the quarter to close at 18,043 and overall market capitalization reached Rs4.4 trillion or $45.2 billion.“Though the index made a new high of 18,185, on March 01, 2013, the market capitalization was still seven percent, 40 percent in dollar terms, down from its record high of Rs 4.8 trillion ($74.9 billion) achieved on April 18, 2008,” said Khan.With index achieving our midyear target of 18,000, we re-iterate that index can make a new high by crossing 19,500 in calendar year 2013 as mentioned in our strategy note date December 12, 2012. Abrupt PKR deprecation due to weakness in external account remains the major risk to our assessment.The positive momentum was accompanied by higher traded volumes. During 1Q2013, average daily traded volumes stood at Rs5.7 billion (US$58.4 million) which compares favorably with Rs4.5 billion (US$46.6 million) recorded in the previous quarter. The average traded volumes are the highest in last 12-quarters.In terms of shares, average volume stood at 210.6 million which is up 25 percent from preceding quarter, while are highest since 1Q2008 (19-quarters high).In addition to higher foreign buying, we believe increased participation by individual investors have also contributed to improved depth of the market. Individual participation on an average improved to 50 percent in 1Q2013 as against 48 percent in the preceding quarter.The foreigners, that hold $3.3 billion worth of Pakistan shares that is 31 percent of free-float and 8 percent of market capital, remained net buyers in 1Q2013.The offshore investors in the quarter bought shares worth $228 million and sold $158 million resulting in net buying of $70 million as of March 28.The numbers compare favorably with $65 million net inflow registered in previous quarter.Giving their future outlook, the analysts reiterated that the market participants were likely to cheer signs of change in the political setup. “Mid caps with high leverage and consumer related business can perform better than large caps in 2013,” said Khan.

Here's how PPP boasts of its record of the last 5 years, as reported by PakistanToday:

The Pakistan People’s Party on Saturday released a 29-point report on its five year performance, highlighting major achievements during the period.It makes special mention of the constitutional reforms, particularly the 18th, 19th and 20th amendments which provided provincial autonomy, transfer of presidential powers to parliament, smooth installation of caretaker governments and striking down of president’s power to dissolve the assemblies.Munir Ahmad Khan, the PPP in-charge policy and planning cell, presented the report before the media at a press conference. He said that credit goes to the PPP for ensuring independence granted to the Election Commission of Pakistan.Khan also came up with a list of important decisions and steps taken by the PPP government to mitigate sufferings of the people despite terrorism in the country.In this regard, he mentioned a record increase in wheat production, increase in salaries of govt officials up to 158 percent, disbursement of Rs 70 billion among 7.5 million deserving families through the Benazir Income Support Programmed and financial help to 135,000 deserving people by Pakistan Baitul Maal.On steps taken by the government for economic revival, Khan cited the Pak-Iran agreement on the gas pipeline, agreement with China on Gwadar Port, increase in foreign exchange reserves from $6 billion in 2008 to $16 billion in 2013, increase in export from $18 billion in 2008 to $29 billion in 2012, boost in stock market from 5,220 points in 2008 to 18,185 points in 2013 and reduction in interest rate from 17 percent in 2008 to 9 percent in 2013.He believed that these measures would help improve the economy and ameliorate the people.Talking about the measures taken to increase production of electricity, the PPP leader told reporters that the PPP-led government added 3,600MW of electricity to the system besides initiating additional work on Mangla and Tarbela dams for increase of 4,500MW in the system.The previous government, he added, also got $3.5 billion for Basha Dam, initiated Neelum-Jhelum, Gomal and Satpara dams and Thar Coal project to get electricity from coal besides Jamphar project to get electricity out of air.He said further the PPP government also reinstated thousands of government servants who were dismissed during the last 13 years and also regularised thousands of contract employees.Among steps taken by the government for welfare of the masses, Munir Khan listed resumption of trade union activities, distribution of shares among 500,000 industrial workers, cheep tractors to farmers through Benazir Tractor Scheme, increase rural economy from 50 billion in 2008 to 800 billion rupees in 2013.He said Faisalabad-Multan Motorway and construction of thousands of kilometres of roads.

Here's an Indian Express story on how Indian PM was snubbed by South Africans at BRICS summit:

The Indian delegation has returned quite upset from South Africa and for good reason, because this is, perhaps, the first time that the Indian Prime Minister has gone to a country and failed to hold a separate meeting with the host.

What probably hurt more was that Singh was the first among the BRICS leaders to reach Durban on March 25, a day before the summit, and still Zuma could not find the time while he played the proper host to his Chinese and Russian counterparts. In the end, Singh managed to hold separate meetings with all BRICS leaders except Zuma.

The Chinese side had turned Xi's visit into a state visit, which meant South Africa had full-fledged bilateral fare laid out, with agreements and deals being signed on the side. While Zuma had to give nearly an entire day to Xi in Pretoria, he could not ignore Russian President Vladimir Putin in Durban because Moscow had converted the trip into a "working" visit which meant formalised bilateral content like adding some new clauses to their bilateral treaty of friendship and cooperation.

As a result, India and Brazil seemed relegated. India, perhaps, a bit more. For starters, the South African government took control of all hotel accommodation in and around Durban since heads of states and government of some 18 African countries were also to be there for a retreat with BRICS nations on March 27.

It's not clear how the dice rolled, but the Prime Minister found himself allotted a resort in Zimbali, 40 km from Durban while the Brazilian, Russian and Chinese leaders were lodged in hotels within Durban, close to the venue where the summit was held over two days.

So, Singh had to travel into the city on both days of the summit, March 26-27, and also suffer the long delays in the program

Unlike Singh, the Brazilian President, who was to meet Zuma after the meeting with the PM, refused to wait and left for her hotel — an option unavailable to the PM as his location was out of town.

(A) "...My contention as regards spread of Islam in India is : India, because of its caste system was the most ideal country for spreading Islam. We failed because we never treated the new muslims equals...."

(B) "Kings readily married high birth women but never gave their daughters in marriage to even high class new muslims let alone shudars."

(C)"....But according to Brahmin teachings Muslims of all classes remained " malich ". That was and is Muslims fate in, pre partition post partition India"----

A) Go to Saudi Arabia (or similar) and see if the local Muslims treat you as their "equal".

B) Whilst you are there in Saudi Arabia, see if the local Muslims are willing to "give their daughters" in marriage to you or someone in your family.

And keep in mind that plenty of them routinely visit Pakistan to "marry" teenage Pakistani girls "given to them" by devout Pakistani fathers who are immensely proud to have an "Pure Arab, Original Muslim" as son-in-law.

'Beti oopar waley ghar may dee'

C) Brahmin teaching of "malich" applied equally to Christians. It was not restricted just to Muslims. And yet, Christians in India today are BY FAR the more educated community with the least incidence of poverty. Of all communties, they have made the MOST progress post-partition. How do you explain that?

Why is the "fate" of one "malich" so different from that of the other "malich" in post-partition India?

We need to think more about these issues. We need to make deeper analyses and avoid the intellectually-weak practise of summarizing the world with superficial analogies. We need to look inside, identify our weaknesses and then reform ourselves.

Here is your oft-quoted friend Ambedkar writing about the pros & cons of Partition in 1945:

http://alturl.com/8fpdy

It is well-written and shows clear thinking. A must read for >>YOU<< as it begins with the Lahore Declaration. He also repeats your point about "Hindu is society essentially undemocratic". It also has good data in Tables at the end that show revenues, composition of Army and so forth.

Note that he writes as a Dalit (i.e. he views both Hindus and Muslims as different from himself) and analyzes the Hindu-Muslim communal issue unemotionally from a third-party stance.

His conclusion in 1945? Partition would be good for BOTH India and Pakistan. He argues that the people who are (1945) trying to prevent partition are driven not by logic but by emotion.

Please read it and write a new blog article with your broad view on his articulation of the issue.

"..an ignorant fanatic like Komireddi as way to excuse the behavior of vile majoritatianism of Modi and others"

"... one wonders what possesses Komireddi to write so viciously if it isn’t jingoism and bigotry without a mask?"

"Grow up Mr. Komireddi. The world has moved on. So should you. Update yourself. Educate yourself."

Wow! Strong words!READMORE: http://alturl.com/xej2f

Notes:1) When you see charged emotion and name-calling like this, you can be sure that a "raw nerve" has been touched somewhere.

2) Kallmeready is a COMMIE. He hates Modi. He hates RSS. He despises all forms of jingoism as bourgeousie ignorance. He rails against the bigotry of Hindutwa groups. He does not believe in Nation States. He is an international secular-socialist inspired by Karl Marx. And while he could well be wrong, he is certainly well educated and well-read-- certainly not worthy of the tag "ignorant fanatic".

Given all this, Hamdani really looks silly. Perhaps he should have spend more time STUDYING Kallmeready's background and work before lashing out emotionally like this?

Isn't it strange that you keep quoting Kallmeready in your blog as a rare Indian "truth teller", and here Hamdani is accusing him of lying!

History cannot really be changed by changing the narratives, as many of our countrymen seem to think.

The theories of the past are not abstract debates, they are actually living-on in terms of the events that are now unfolding before our eyes.

Evil were the seeds; now see, evil is the crop. Evil were the deeds; now see, evil is the recompense. --Quran 42.2

Hamdani will keep repeating his viewpoint while watching helplessly as his worst nightmares come true all around him....

Here's a PakistanToday story on HuT's campaign against voting and democracy:

The banned outfit Hizbut Tahrir (HT) has started its campaign across the country to convince people not to participate in elections and join hands with the outlawed organisation for the unification of Muslim world as a single state under the leadership of Sheikh Ata Abu Rishta.The campaign has been started in almost all parts of the country and the HT activists have started holding public gatherings and corner meetings to convince people on a point that democracy was against Islam.The intelligence agencies have started operation against the HT and arrested two of its activists from outside a mosque for distributing leaflets among the worshipers and preaching them not to participate in elections.Through the leaflet, the banned outfit invited people to join hands with them to abolish democracy from Pakistan and establish caliphate.The leaflet reads further, “Muslims have not been stung merely twice, but countless times by the current system in Pakistan. Each time new faces come through coup or election, the people curse the old faces. However, only after a while, the new faces appear even uglier and more despised than the older faces. The current system is incapable of looking after the affairs of the people and securing the rights that Allah guaranteed humankind, regardless of their race, language, gender or religion.”It reads further, “Pakistan's current system is a continuation of the British rule occupation that abolished Islamic rule in the Indian subcontinent in the first place. Even though the Muslims shed their pure blood to establish Pakistan in the name of Islam, it was the British Parliament that created Pakistan’s initial legislation under its Indian Independence Act of 1947.”“It is democracy, designed by and inherited from the colonialist kufr that separates our ummah from Islam and its ruling system of khilafah, whether in Pakistan, Egypt or Turkey, Tunisia or Indonesia. The claim that yet more elections within this system would bring change of system is a lie made to secure this system from abolition,” it also reads.“It is the Khilafah alone that ensures our education, foreign policy, economy, judiciary, consultation; accounting and removing of rulers are all according to Islam,” the leaflet adds.Talking to Pakistan Today, a leader of HT confirmed that they had started a campaign across the country for abolishment of democracy and establishment of khilafah in Pakistan.“We will hold public gatherings, corner meetings and door-to-door campaign to boycott the elections as the democracy is un-Islamic,” he added.

^^RH: "Here's a PakistanToday story on HuT's campaign against voting and democracy..."----

But isn't there some truth in what they say?

Hasn't democracy failed Pakistan? Haven't the same old corrupt faces gone through the revolving door and resulted in no real change?

Did Einstein not say that insanity was "doing the same thing repeatedly" (elections) and "expecting different results" (better governance)? So are the HuT not correct in a scientific sense when they call for the abandonment of Democracy because of its demonstrated failure in Pakistan?

51% of Indian-Americans self-report as Hindus18% of Indian-Americans are Christians10% of Indian-Americans are Muslims5% of Indian-Americans are Sikhs2% of Indian-Americans are Jains2% of Indian-Americans belong to 'Some Other' Religion.10% of Indian-Americans are Unaffiliated (No-religion)

See Page 44:http://alturl.com/r5vgx

So it looks like Indian Muslims, Sikhs & Jains are represented more or less in proportion to their population percentage in India.

But Indian Christians are HEAVILY over-represented in US, and Indian Hindus are SEVERELY under-represented.

So where is this under-representation of Muslims and over-representation of Hindus in the Indian-American community that you have been mentioning?

In addition, look closely at the Table on pages 74-75 on "Is your religion the ONLY way?"

Also take a look at the ASTONISHING data in graphs on pages 34-35 on 'Education & Income'.

I have noticed that you always and I mean always see the worst in India and the best in Pakistan. Which i find very unfair. I mean every country has a good and bad side, unlike you i do know that India has alot of problems but I do take in to account that has a population of 1.2BILLION PEOPLE!!! That means it will take alot of time to get everyone on an equal footing. Where as Pakistan has 200million people so whats your excuse. Besides it very easy to past judgement when you are sitting nicely in the U.S. As for the muslim part of your biased view you realise that only reason Muslim were being that way was because of partition, if it had not happened things would have been so different. Another when talk about the KSE vs the BSE you forget that The Bombay Stock Exchange is bigger and more developed than the KSE. also when the SENSEX outperforms the kse 100 you never say anything and when do it is always bad, i would like to know why act like such a jerk!?

Here's a Daily Times story on KSE-100 closing over 19,000 points, record high:

KARACHI: The Karachi stock market closed at a historical high level of 19,000 points on Thursday as emerging clarity on timely elections compelled investors to take fresh positions.

The Karachi Stock Exchange (KSE) 100-share index gained 52.11 points or 0.27 percent to close at 19,034.53 points as compared to 18,982.42 points of the previous session. The KSE 30-share index was up by 23.55 points to close at 14,664.29 points as compared with 14,640.74 points.

“With the emerging clarity on timely elections, investors continued to take fresh positions,” said Topline Sec dealer Samar Iqbal. “Fauji Fertilizer continued to rally after its result announcement.”

Investors remained skeptical on Engro Corp on gas supply issues, she said and added that telecom sector remained under pressure after heavy penalty by Competition Commission of Pakistan. Fauji Cement remained the volume leader with 26 million shares while its share price rose by 3.0 percent.

The market turnover went down by 24.43 percent and traded 147.36 million shares as against 195 million shares of the previous session. The overall market capitalisation gained 0.51 percent and traded Rs 4.687 trillion as against Rs 4.663 trillion. Gainers beat losers 225 to 148, while 22 stocks were unchanged.

Higher local cement prices, recovery in global commodities and easing political concerns played a catalyst role in the bullish activity at KSE amid concerns over dismal earnings outlook for the banking sector....

Of every 100 new-borns that die in the world, 29 are in India. In real, heart-rending numbers that is three lakh babies who die on the day they are born, every year.

Infants fare better even in Pakistan and Bangladesh, says a new report.

Non-governmental organisation Save the Children compared first-day deaths in 186 countries for its "State of World's Mother Report". Luxembourg has the least new-born deaths, India the most, the reports says.

While infant deaths in India have come down by almost half compared to 1990, the rate has been slower than that in, say, Nepal.

The statistics only get worse. More than half the child deaths in India happen in the first month. And India has the biggest disparity between the rich and poor in child deaths.

The country's report card on mother and child health too is abysmal; India is behind Pakistan and Bangladesh on this list.

Lahore, Pakistan - Zia Hyder Naqi started his first business when he was eight years old, turning old newspapers into paper bags in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore. He didn’t earn much, but the 1.5 Pakistani Rupees ($0.02) he made every day was enough to buy him his lunch, and a sense of satisfaction at having made something.

Today, 40 years later, Naqi is the managing director at a plastics manufacturing firm that employs 430 people, and earned $14.2m in revenue last year.

Synthetic Products and Enterprises Ltd (SPEL) is one of the largest firms of its kind in the country, and makes everything from plastic cups to the inner sides of car doors for firms such as Toyota, Honda and Suzuki, and everything in between.

Business has been good for SPEL, Naqi says, but that's not because the government is providing a conducive climate for economic growth.

"Let's start by saying that we work in spite of the government and not because of the government," Naqi told Al Jazeera. "It really means that we have to struggle. We compete against the best in the world."

Power cuts

Pakistan suffers from a raft of economic problems - spiraling inflation and unemployment, a chronic energy crisis, a lack of implementation of existing policies and an unstable investment environment, owing to the country’s tense security situation.

Primary among those difficulties, Naqi says, is the issue of power cuts - or load-shedding, as it is referred to in Pakistan.

"Our reliability is affected when we have load-shedding, because we don't know when power will arrive and go. So we have to create back-ups, which means that the cost of operations goes up. It affects morale, it affects our work, it affects our delivery, it affects our customers. [It affects] the cost at which we deliver, and how competitive or uncompetitive we become to the customer," he says, estimating that the cost of putting in those back-up system raises the overall cost of his products by as much as 10 percent.

Last year, Naqi’s firm spent an extra $1.2m on putting back-up generators into place, fuelling them and paying for their general upkeep, as opposed to taking electricity off the grid. Moreover, he says, that $1.2m is a sunk cost, as it is not being invested into productive processes. The result: it’s harder for Pakistan’s products to compete in the international market, as the cost of producing electricity pushes firms into a loop of spiraling costs and being unable to further invest in new technologies.

Pakistan’s electricity woes, analysts say, are a result of industrial growth outstripping the pace of growth in generation, and a woefully maintained distribution system that results in line losses of around 20 percent At its peak last summer, the country’s electricity shortfall was a staggering 8,500MW - about 40 percent of the country’s total generation capacity (not counting transmission losses)-------Meanwhile, far from the think tanks and policy committees, the entrepreneurial spirit of the eight-year-old Naqi is still alive and well. Over the last month, dozens of shops have sprung up all over Lahore, selling elections campaign-related merchandise - everything from pins and badges (for about $0.40 each) to gigantic flags ($2.44), from T-shirts ($3.05) to stuffed soft toys in the shape of party election symbols.

"With the amount of money that I’m making right now," says Muhammad Imran, 30, the owner of one such shop, "we could have built a whole bridge!"....

According to World Values Survey done by two Swedish researchers, India, Jordan, Bangladesh and Hong Kong by far the least tolerant.

In only three of 81 surveyed countries, more than 40 percent of respondents said they would not want a neighbor of a different race. This included 43.5 percent of Indians, 51.4 percent of Jordanians and an astonishingly high 71.8 percent of Hong Kongers and 71.7 percent of Bangladeshis.

Unfortunately, the Swedish economists did not include all of the World Values Survey data in their final research paper. So I went back to the source, compiled the original data and mapped it out on the infographic above. In the bluer countries, fewer people said they would not want neighbors of a different race; in red countries, more people did.

Pakistan, remarkably tolerant, also an outlier. Although the country has a number of factors that coincide with racial intolerance – sectarian violence, its location in the least-tolerant region of the world, low economic and human development indices – only 6.5 percent of Pakistanis objected to a neighbor of a different race. This would appear to suggest Pakistanis are more racially tolerant than even the Germans or the Dutch.

The idea of racial purity is central to Hindu nationalists in India who have a long history of admiration for the Nazi leader, including his "Final Solution".

In his book "We" (1939), Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, the leader of the Hindu Nationalist RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) wrote, "To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races -- the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by."

Here's a WSJ report on Indian media's rejection of India-Pakistan hyphenation:

If you want to understand how far away India and Pakistan are from détente, take a look at how Indian newspapers are reacting to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s comments about the peace process at an event in New Delhi last night.

Mr. Kerry made the point that India and Pakistan, who have fought three wars since 1947, could use trade as the thin end of the wedge from which to improve overall relations. What’s more, he said, there were low-hanging economic benefits from increased trade.

“If India and Pakistan can confidently invest in each other, then the rest of the world will more confidently invest in you,” Mr. Kerry said.

This might seem anodyne to the casual observer. But this is not the kind of talk that goes down well in India, where efforts to put the two countries on a level are often frowned upon.

From the perspective of many in India, Pakistan’s continued sponsoring of Islamist militant groups means there should be no comparison.

The Times of India, the country’s most circulated English language newspaper, in a front-page story, said Mr. Kerry “may have ruffled a few feathers when he sought to draw parity between India and Pakistan.”

The headline of the story said the secretary “hyphenates India and Pakistan” – a dirty verb in India.

It was the Bush administration that pushed for the “dehyphenation” of India and Pakistan. This resulted in a U.S.-India civil nuclear agreement in 2008, a deal that was not extended to Pakistan.

The Hindu, another popular daily, said Sunday’s speech had “displeased” Indian diplomats because Mr. Kerry “has the perception of being soft on Pakistan unlike Ms. Clinton.”

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was popular in New Delhi in part because of her tough stance on Pakistan for failing to do more to stamp out militancy on its soil.

In 2008, after 10 Pakistani militants laid siege to Mumbai, India’s financial capital, killing more than 160 people, Ms. Clinton leaned on Pakistan to take steps to cut off militant groups.

On a visit to India in 2011, Ms. Clinton said Pakistan had an obligation to prosecute the perpetrators of the 2008 attacks “transparently, fully and urgently.”

“We have made it very clear that Pakistan needs to bring people to justice,” she said. “There is a limit to what both the U.S and India can do, but we intend to press as hard as possible.”

Indian officials blame Pakistan for failing to push ahead with the prosecutions of the seven suspects it has charged in connection with the Mumbai attacks. Islamabad says it does not have enough evidence from Indian authorities to move on with the trials.

The Hindu appeared to chide Mr. Kerry for commenting on recent floods in northern India, which have killed hundreds of people, rather than bringing up those who died in Mumbai.

In an article titled “Kerry’s soft line on Pakistan a sore subject,” the paper said: “Departing from his predecessor Hillary Clinton’s line of commiserating with the victims of the 2008 Mumbai attacks, he opted to sympathize with the victims of the Uttarakhand flash floods instead.”

On Sunday, Mr. Kerry acknowledged there were contentious issues between the two countries, but said he hoped the recent election of Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif could herald a “new era” between the nations.

In "A History of Pakistan and its origins", Christophe Jafferlot cites British-Pakistani Prof Samuel Martin Burke rejecting the notion that the Two-Nation Theory died in 1971 with Pakistan's split into Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Burke says that the two-nation theory was even more strongly asserted in that the Awami League rebels had struggled for their own country, Bangladesh, and not to join India. In so doing, they had put into practice the theory behind the original resolution to form Pakistan, which envisaged two Muslim states at the two extremities of the subcontinent.

Here's a Dawn piece by Indian journalist Javed Naqvi on Dalit leader Amberkar:

As the intellectual and academic focus shifts to the Dalit worldview in India with Arundhati Roy’s fresh evaluation of Dalit mascot B. R. Ambedkar, who like Jinnah was also Mahatma Gandhi’s bête noir, fresh perspectives are expected to be unearthed from that largely masked historiography.

For all his sharp and often sympathetic assertions on Pakistan, and despite the fact that Ambedkar and Jinnah shared the laurels at the Round Table Conference and together won short-lived victories for their communities, the Dalit view of the freedom movement has been largely airbrushed at every stage of academia in both countries.

The deletion of Jaswant Singh’s and Advani’s perspectives on Jinnah is of a piece with the fate assigned to Ambedkar’s kindred bonding with Jinnah. But why has he been shunned in Pakistan? There will be hopefully a renewal of interest in the great Dalit intellectual not the least because of the interest shown in him by Ms Roy, whose word counts for something even among the most India-phobic Pakistanis.

Ambedkar’s appreciation of the Muslim quandary flowed from his view of the Congress as an upper caste Hindu party, not willing to do away with the horrors of the caste system in a free India.

“At the Round Table Conference, the Muslims presented their list of safeguards, which were formulated in the well-known 14 points. The Hindu representatives at the Round Table Conference would not consent to them,” notes Ambedkar dispassionately in his work Pakistan, or the Partition of India, which he wrote in 1940.

“There was an impasse. The British government intervened and gave what is known as “the Communal decision”.

By that decision, the Muslims got all their 14 points. There was much bitterness amongst the Hindus against the Communal Award. But, the Congress did not take part in the hostility that was displayed by the Hindus generally towards it, although it did retain the right to describe it as anti-national and to get it changed with the consent of the Muslims.

“So careful was the Congress not to wound the feelings of the Muslims that when the Resolution was moved in the Central Assembly condemning the Communal Award, the Congress, though it did not bless it, remained neutral, neither opposing nor supporting it. The Mahomedans were well justified in looking upon this Congress attitude as a friendly gesture.” Ambedkar’s observations were unbiased, neutral.

He then notes characteristically without fear or favour: “The victory of the Congress at the polls in the provinces, where the Hindus are in a majority, did not disturb the tranquillity of the Musalmans. They felt they had nothing to fear from the Congress and the prospects were that the Congress and the Muslim League would work the constitution in partnership.

“But, two years and three months of the Congress government in the Hindu provinces have completely disillusioned them and have made them the bitterest enemies of the Congress. The Deliverance Day celebration held on the 22nd December 1939 shows the depth of their resentment. What is worse, their bitterness is not confined to the Congress. The Musalmans, who at the Round Table Conference joined in the demand for Swaraj, are today the most ruthless opponents of Swaraj.”

What has the Congress done to annoy the Muslims so much?

Ambedkar answers his own question: “The Muslim League has asserted that under the Congress regime the Muslims were actually tyrannised and oppressed. Two committees appointed by the League are said to have investigated and reported on the matter. But apart from these matters which require to be examined by an impartial tribunal, there are undoubtedly two things which have produced the clash: (1) the refusal by the Congress to recognise the Muslim League as the only representative body of the Muslims, (2) the refusal by the Congress to form coalition ministries in the Congress provinces.”...

Segregation has inevitably led to curious business opportunities. Sensing that mixed neighbourhoods were fast disappearing and even well-to-do-Muslims were finding it a problem to buy property, Ahmedabad-based entrepreneur Mohammed Ali Husain began a property fair connecting Muslim builders with buyers.

More than 40,000 potential buyers have turned up for the two fairs he's held so far, checking out and buying housing offered by 25 Muslim builders.

"Earlier communities lived in segregated neighbourhoods for cultural reasons," say Mr Husain. "Now the reason is the fear of the other."

Deep divisionsIn a deeply divided and hierarchical society like India, segregated living - and housing - has existed for centuries.

Ahmedabad has been always divided on caste, community and religious lines. But, as analysts say, the ghettoisation was relative in the sense that Muslim-dominated areas co-existed with Hindu-dominated ones.

"These mixed neighbourhoods disappeared after Muslims became the main victims in communal riots which have gone on a par with their growing socio-economic marginalisation," write Christophe Jaffrelot and Charlotte Thomas in their study of ghettoisation in Ahmedabad.

The divisions of the past appeared to be more cultural in nature; the divisions of today appear to be rooted in fear, distrust and anomie.

Mr Kadri says he was picking up an order at a burger chain drive-thru a few years ago when he overheard the manager asking one of his delivery boys to not to deliver to Juhapura because, "people will chop you into pieces if you go there".

Rising urbanisation was expected to blur religious and social boundaries, but that hasn't happened fully.

So despite the fact that more than a third of India's Muslims live in cities and towns - making them the most urbanised community of a significant size - poverty and discrimination continues to easily push them into ghettos.

Even Dalits - formerly known as untouchables - who escape the stifling caste-based discrimination of their villages to live and work in the cities find that they still end up living in ghettos.

Yasser Latif Hamdani: "Things changed drastically on the fifth day when I started reporting on the abject poverty I experienced in South Delhi and old Delhi; one uncle, whom I have known for a decade and a half and who is a renowned food journalist in India, even threatened to get me deported for “misusing my visa”. It is about marketing boss and no one can be allowed. Shining India sans marketing is a third world country with huge disparities and social inequities. This is an unforgiveable criticism even from someone like me who has principally refused to look at India as the enemy.This is a strange kind of psychosis. Now, if India were a person, it would be an extremely insecure, egoistic and overly prickly individual, ready to draw daggers at anyone who dares criticise it. Much of this was confirmed in the way India reacted to the film India’s Daughter. Many reasons are given for this opposition. One argument was that the airing of the film amounts to contempt of court. This is a flimsy excuse. Another one is that there was no “informed consent”. Without getting into the merits of these arguments, suffice it to say that these arguments would have made sense if India had attempted only to block the airing of the video in its territorial jurisdiction. The Indian government’s notice to the BBC clearly indicates that its aim was to block the airing of the video globally. Not only were YouTube and Google too eager to please the Indian government, even the BBC was threatened and cowered into withdrawing the video from YouTube, citing “copyright infringement”. Basically, theBBC has admitted that it cannot take on the government of India. For people like me — I was the counsel in the YouTube case before the Lahore High Court (LHC) –this complicates things further. On the one hand, the world’s largest democracy, which talks of democracy and secularism with a forked tongue, has effectively censored criticism of misogyny in its society and, on the other hand, the champions of free speech — Google and theBBC — have bent over backwards to accommodate India’s humongous ego. All the moral arguments one had about freedom of speech and open society have gone out the window. ..Amazingly, the ban on India’s Daughter came the same week the state of Maharashtra, where the great cosmopolitan city of Mumbaiwith its huge Muslim population is located, decided to criminalise slaughter and possession of beef. Any person possessing or eating beef in the great state of Maharashtra can now be imprisoned for a period of up to five years and fined Indian Rs 10,000. Consider the fact that Pakistan, which is officially an Islamic state, does not criminalise possessing or eating of pork. This makes this ban even more unconscionable for a country that is so self-righteously pompous about its secular democratic credentials.Of course, this has been a longstanding project of Indian nationalists pre-dating even partition. Gandhi had justified his support for the reactionary Khilafat Movement in the 1920s by saying that he wanted the cows to be spared the Muslim knife. The reasons had nothing to do with vegetarianism or love for animals (lamb slaughter or chicken slaughter has never had any political appeal) but the fact that the cow is a holy animal for the Hindus. Hindu cultural life thus was the bedrock upon which Indian nationalism was sediment. The project has reached fruition in 2015"

Here's a piece in Caravan magazine on the Jamiat Ulema Hind (JUH) opposition to partition:

The JUH now formed a separate party, the Azad Muslim Parliamentary Board, to fight the elections and ward off the criticism that it was merely a handmaiden of the Congress. Its chief campaigner was Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani, the principal of the Darul Uloom, Deoband, and one of the foremost Islamic scholars in the country. Madani, as his name suggests, had an intimate connection with Medina as he had been a renowned teacher of Hadith in that holy city for nearly fifteen years. Madani remained steadfast in his advocacy of a composite undivided India and emerged as the most prominent alim opposed to the ML and its Pakistan demand. Reacting to the accusation that he had ‘joined the Hindus’, he wrote to a correspondent in Rawalpindi

You write that I have joined the Hindus and you are stunned by that. Why do you get affected by such propaganda? Muslims have been together with the Hindus since they moved to Hindustan. And I have been with them since I was born. I was born and raised here. If two people live together in the same country, same city, they will share lot of things with each other. Till the time there are Muslims in India, they will be together with the Hindus. In the bazaars, in homes, in railways, trams, in buses, lorries, in stations, colleges, post offices, jails, police stations, courts, councils, assemblies, hotels, etc. You tell me where and when we don’t meet them or are not together with them? You are a zamindar. Are not your tenants Hindus? You are a trader; don’t you buy and sell from Hindus? You are a lawyer don’t you have Hindu clients? You are in a district or municipal board; won’t you be dealing with Hindus? Who is not with the Hindus? All ten crore Muslims of India are guilty then of being with the Hindus.

Madani believed that the ‘fundamental institution of contemporary political life was the territorial nation-state’ and India was indeed such a State . The main problem facing India was British imperialism which could only be overthrown through a joint Hindu-Muslim struggle. This would have the effect of also freeing other parts of Islamic world from British yoke, since it was control over India that allowed them to hold on to their worldwide Empire. Madani opposed Pakistan since he saw it as a British ploy to divide and weaken the nationalist movement and extend British control over the subcontinent. He pointed to their dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and reducing its component parts to colonial appendages. Madani therefore attacked ML and Pakistan in a number of different ways. To begin with, he accused Jinnah of deliberately not coming up with a concrete plan about Pakistan. Quoting a news report from the Haqiqat of Lucknow, he pointed out that when Jinnah was asked at a press conference in Karachi about what Pakistan meant, the Qaid asked for more time to provide clarifications on the matter. On being pressed further, Jinnah directed the inquisitive newsman to existing writings and his own statements on Pakistan. When a Muslim editor reportedly pointed out that he had read all the existing literature and concluded that Pakistan was suicidal for the Indian Muslims, Jinnah got upset and refused to take further questions. For Madani this meant that Mr. Jinnah till date had not fully thought through or worked out the implications of Pakistan.

- See more at: http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/madani-jinnah-muslim-league-partition#sthash.uK7DCe34.YzTRIOuP.dpuf

Here's a piece in Caravan magazine on the Jamiat Ulema Hind (JUH) opposition to partition:

The JUH now formed a separate party, the Azad Muslim Parliamentary Board, to fight the elections and ward off the criticism that it was merely a handmaiden of the Congress. Its chief campaigner was Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani, the principal of the Darul Uloom, Deoband, and one of the foremost Islamic scholars in the country. Madani, as his name suggests, had an intimate connection with Medina as he had been a renowned teacher of Hadith in that holy city for nearly fifteen years. Madani remained steadfast in his advocacy of a composite undivided India and emerged as the most prominent alim opposed to the ML and its Pakistan demand. Reacting to the accusation that he had ‘joined the Hindus’, he wrote to a correspondent in Rawalpindi

You write that I have joined the Hindus and you are stunned by that. Why do you get affected by such propaganda? Muslims have been together with the Hindus since they moved to Hindustan. And I have been with them since I was born. I was born and raised here. If two people live together in the same country, same city, they will share lot of things with each other. Till the time there are Muslims in India, they will be together with the Hindus. In the bazaars, in homes, in railways, trams, in buses, lorries, in stations, colleges, post offices, jails, police stations, courts, councils, assemblies, hotels, etc. You tell me where and when we don’t meet them or are not together with them? You are a zamindar. Are not your tenants Hindus? You are a trader; don’t you buy and sell from Hindus? You are a lawyer don’t you have Hindu clients? You are in a district or municipal board; won’t you be dealing with Hindus? Who is not with the Hindus? All ten crore Muslims of India are guilty then of being with the Hindus.

Madani believed that the ‘fundamental institution of contemporary political life was the territorial nation-state’ and India was indeed such a State . The main problem facing India was British imperialism which could only be overthrown through a joint Hindu-Muslim struggle. This would have the effect of also freeing other parts of Islamic world from British yoke, since it was control over India that allowed them to hold on to their worldwide Empire. Madani opposed Pakistan since he saw it as a British ploy to divide and weaken the nationalist movement and extend British control over the subcontinent. He pointed to their dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and reducing its component parts to colonial appendages. Madani therefore attacked ML and Pakistan in a number of different ways. To begin with, he accused Jinnah of deliberately not coming up with a concrete plan about Pakistan. Quoting a news report from the Haqiqat of Lucknow, he pointed out that when Jinnah was asked at a press conference in Karachi about what Pakistan meant, the Qaid asked for more time to provide clarifications on the matter. On being pressed further, Jinnah directed the inquisitive newsman to existing writings and his own statements on Pakistan. When a Muslim editor reportedly pointed out that he had read all the existing literature and concluded that Pakistan was suicidal for the Indian Muslims, Jinnah got upset and refused to take further questions. For Madani this meant that Mr. Jinnah till date had not fully thought through or worked out the implications of Pakistan.

- See more at: http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/madani-jinnah-muslim-league-partition#sthash.uK7DCe34.YzTRIOuP.dpuf

#Pakistan 4th largest source of remittances to #India. $5 billion sent annually from Pakistan to #Indian relatives. http://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/pakistan-4th-largest-source-of-remittances-to-india-115122400035_1.html#.VtE2Ian44zg.twitter …

Surprising as it may seem, but Indians who have migrated to Pakistan are expected to remit back home a staggering $4.9 billion in 2015. This would make Pakistan the fourth largest source of India's remittances this year, according to a new study by the World Bank.

Pakistan is home to more than 1.4 million people who were born in India. However, these immigrants are not your traditional non-resident Indians. They are a remnant of partition when colonial India was split and millions of people moved as they picked a country or were kicked out and displaced by violence.

The World Bank attributes a large slice of India’s annual remittance income to Pakistan because there is such a large group of India-born citizens there. The money also flows the other way, according to the bank’s model, as there are around 1.1 million Pakistan-born people living in India. The World Bank estimates Pakistan received remittances of more than $2 billion from India.

Some readers of The Wall Street Journal who first saw these numbers in a story titled “The Difference Between Indian and Chinese Migrants,” were shocked, skeptical and scared. The amounts had to be a mistake, some said in comments, or proof that money is being sent to finance terrorism or organized crime in India.

Mr. Ratha still stands by the bank’s best guess and says the origin of the cash is much less sinister.

The billions of dollars flying back and forth between the two countries are from the same place as the rest of the world’s remittances: family and friends supporting each other across borders.

There are literally millions of family connections between the two countries and millions of reasons a person in Pakistan might find a way to get money to relatives in India. The money could be sent for a brother in need, a cousin’s wedding, an uncle’s funeral or even to help educate a niece.

Despite the animosity between the two countries, as well as the rules, regulations and restrictions, family and finance finds a way.

Sometimes that means using informal avenues like the hawala money transfer system or arranging for the money to be sent via a different country. Sometimes it means an envelope of cash carried by a friend traveling to India.

“These are two big economies right next to each other. The money must be flowing,” Mr. Ratha said. “That number we put out could even be an underestimation.”

Most people choose not to migrate in spite of poverty and oppression as obvious from lowest rates of migration out of sub-Saharan Africa.

Results show that despite increase in the absolute number of migrants, Africa, particularly SubSaharan Africa has one of the lowest rate of emigration in the world and a majority of them migrate to other African countries signifying the importance of south-south migration. Poorer countries generally have lower rate of emigration and higher rate of intra-African migrant. Bad socio-economic conditions generally seem to lead to higher rate of emigration by highly skilled individuals. Generally, migration is driven by motives toimprove livelihoods with notable evidence on changes in labor market status. Often, self-employed or unemployed émigré ended up in wage employment. The paper outlines policy issues emerging from the migration trend in Africa.

t is often said that the only way to reduce migration from poor countries is to boost development, but this ignores the inconvenient fact that development is generally not associated with lower levels of emigration. Important emigration countries such as Mexico, Morocco, Turkey and the Philippines are typically not among the poorest countries. Meanwhile – and against popular perceptions of a “continent on the move” – Sub-Saharan Africa is the least migratory region of the world.

Development drives migration

In fact, when you examine the data, human and economic development is initially associated with increasing emigration. Any form of development in the poorest countries of the world is therefore likely to lead to accelerating emigration. Such findings contradict conventional thinking and force us to radically change our views on migration. Such rethinking can be achieved by learning to see migration as an intrinsic part of broader development processes rather than as a problem to be solved, or the temporary response to development “disequilibria”.

Excerpts from a right-wing Hindu publication hindunet.org on the history of water issues between India and Pakistan:

Following the partition of the sub-continent, India and Pakistan signed a "standstill agreement" on 18 December 1947 which guaranteed to maintain water supplies at the level of allocation in the pre-partition days. However, on 1 April 1948, India without any warning cut off supplies to Pakistan from both Ferozepur and Gurdaspur. The action was contrary to the letter and the spirit of the international law covering interstate river waters. The Barcelona Convention of 1921 on interstate river waters to which India was a signatory disallowed every State to stop or alter the course of a river which flowing through its own territories went into a neighbouring country and also forbade to use its waters in such a way as to imperil the lands in the neighbouring State or to impede their adequate use by the lower riparians. But India as the upper riparian of the Indus rivers was in a position of strength. India could deflect the Beas into the Sutlej above Bhakra or divert the Ravi into the Beas at Madhopur. It could construct a dam on Wular lake in the Kashmir valley and dry up the river Jhelum. A headwork on the Chenab at Dhiangarh, north of Jammu, could deflect the Chenab from its natural course into Pakistan. The major projects of the Bhakra, Pong and Thein dams then in the offing, if completed, could drain off the rivers of Sutlej, Beas and Ravi.

------

The Indus water Treaty was signed at Karachi on 19 September, 1960 by Prime Minister Nehru and President Ayub Khan. Under the agreement India promised to supply waters to Pakistan for the payment of expenses for operating the Madhopur and Ferozepur head works and their carrier channels, and also to contribute Rupees 100 crore for construction of replacement headworks to Pakistan.

One In Every Four 'Beggars' In #India Is #Muslim: Report http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2016/07/29/one-in-every-four-beggars-in-india-is-muslim-report/ …

Nearly 25 percent of the 3.7 lakh Indians categorised as "beggars" in the 2011 Census are Muslim, according to data released last month, reported The Indian Express. That's a total of 92,760 Muslim beggars in India.

While most of beggars in India are Hindus—about 72.2 percent—Hindus are also the majority religious group in India, accounting for almost four-fifths of the country's population. The number of Muslim beggars is significant as compared to their overall population in India, which stands at 17.22 crore as per the last Census.

A majority of the Muslim beggars are women, which is contrary to the national trend, where there are fewer women beggars compared to men.

Earlier, reports have indicated that Muslims have the lowest living standard in India, and spend less than ₹33 every day. The steadily increasing Muslim population in India is neglected, reported The Economist.

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I am the Founder and President of PakAlumni Worldwide, a global social network for Pakistanis, South Asians and their friends. I also served as Chairman of the NEDians Convention 2007. In addition to being a South Asia watcher, an investor, business consultant and avid follower of the world financial markets, I have more than 25 years experience in the hi-tech industry. I have been on the faculties of Rutgers University and NED Engineering University and cofounded two high-tech startups, Cautella, Inc. and DynArray Corp and managed multi-million dollar P&Ls. I am a pioneer of the PC and mobile businesses and I have held senior management positions in hardware and software development of Intel’s microprocessor product line from 8086 to Pentium processors. My experience includes senior roles in marketing, engineering and business management. I was recognized as “Person of the Year” by PC Magazine for my contribution to 80386 program. I have an MS degree in Electrical engineering from the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
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